


it's a wonder anyone can breathe here

by notinthisarmy



Category: Coolgames Inc (Podcast) RPF, McElroy Vlogs & Podcasts RPF
Genre: Dirty Talk, M/M, Masturbation, Skype Sex, Vague D/s dynamics, interruptions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2017-07-02
Packaged: 2018-11-22 11:33:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11379360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notinthisarmy/pseuds/notinthisarmy
Summary: Nick had always found the concept of deer freezing in the headlights of an oncoming car to be baffling - something dumb animals did because they weren’t equipped to handle what was barreling towards them. But he got it, suddenly, sitting there watching Griffin’s slightly grainy image, feeling his heart crawl up into his throat. He sat very still and thought, wildly, that maybe if he didn’t move, Griffin might think his computer had frozen.





	it's a wonder anyone can breathe here

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from the Broken Bells' song _Medicine_.

“Unnntil next time, I’m Griffin McElroy -”

“ -and I’m Nick Robinson -”

“No problem fun.”

Griffin gave him a moment to turn off the recording, and then leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms behind his head as if he could finally relax. “You didn’t even fight me, bud,” he commented.

“Huh?”

“Like, I was undeniably in pretty fine form today, but I spent a good portion of that whole thing just railroading you.”

And Nick realized that was pretty much true. But the thing was, Griffin was such a good rambler, it seemed like a crime to try and fight him. Most of the time if Nick was rambling it was an indication of something gone wrong - he was anxious, or angry, or just plain wired on caffeine - but either way, it seldom felt good, and it never produced his best work. He was funnier when he was riffing off somebody else, or giving himself some good pauses between dry, understated jokes.

Griffin was the polar opposite. Griffin could start a sentence seemingly with no punchline in mind, and he’d manage to make eight jokes along the way to finding it. If Nick didn’t know any better he’d say that Griffin really shone when he turned his brain off and let his mouth run - but that wasn’t it. It was just that Griffin’s brain ran much, much faster than Nick’s. He was like a comedic centrifuge - if he talked fast enough he could find the funny in anything.

“I guess,” was all Nick said. It wasn’t something he ever thought too hard about, but he did tend to surrender first. He just figured whatever Griffin had to say would be funnier, and more importantly, he liked listening to Griffin talk. “I don’t know, it just felt like - you seemed to be on a roll, so…”

“Well that is _very_ polite of you, Nicolas.”

“Is this - is this like the world’s worst apology, or-?”

“Do you _want_ an apology?” Griffin was biting down on his lip but grinning anyway.

“I mean, no, it - it’s fine. It was good.” Nick was starting to feel defensive for no reason at all. Griffin wasn’t accusing him of anything, there was nothing weird about any of this, and he was probably just experiencing low blood sugar.

“It was _good_?” Griffin’s cocked his head and raised his eyebrows. Nick flushed. There was something brewing in Griffin’s expression, something he couldn’t read and couldn’t acknowledge.

“It was a good episode! It’s gonna be a good episode. Which I should already be editing, so actually you are _impeding_ the process of it becoming a good episode. So I’m gonna hang up now, okay, great seeing you, take care!”

Griffin managed to sneak in a “Uh, okay, bye - ” before Nick ended the call and then, for good measure, shut his laptop and stood up from his desk. His face still felt hot.

“The hell,” he said aloud, and then he went into the kitchen to get a beer. He leaned against the counter for a minute, pressing the beer to his cheek. In his pocket, his phone buzzed.

“Nope,” he said aloud, as if the phone would hear him. He cracked the can open with a satisfying hiss, and took a sip. It was shitty beer, but it was cold and the fizz helped bring him back to reality “Editing time.”

 

 

 

 

 

Okay. So Griffin wasn’t wrong. He did, in fact, spend a lot of this episode cutting Nick off. It escalated, too, as the recording progressed - Griffin got more excited, and Nick definitely threw some concepts into the ring but he wasn’t quite as balls-to-the-wall psyched about this haunted doll dating sim as Griffin. There were even times he started to speak and Griffin would go, “Nononono,” and counter with an idea of his own. Nick heard his recorded self let out a weird tiny giggle, and he only vaguely remembered that. God. That had to be cut. That was fucking embarrassing.

His phone buzzed again.

“The only problem I’m seeing here is if -”

“You are _mistaken_ , my friend, I’m sorry but you are so wrong because there are _no_ issues with this beautiful beautiful idea.”

“But see I’m just not sure how we - if you’re an average joe, and you’re going to creepy haunted doll high school, is it -”

“You’re the _transfer_ student! Don’t you _get_ it, it’s like in one of your _a_ nimes…” Griffin’s voice had taken on a whiny quality here, and recorded Nick laughed and didn't venture any more criticism.

That was the other thing about editing - having to trim those moments when they forgot themselves and got a little too flirty. It was a lot easier to understand than the interruptions, actually, because it had started slow and he'd had enough time to get used to the idea that neither of them was coming right out to admit it, but it wasn't off the table either. That was fine with Nick for the time being. There was inherent risk in addressing it, and it was impossible to be sure how serious either of them were.

His phone vibrated a third time, and Nick finally gave in and pulled it out of his pocket.

 **Griffin:** _sorry, did I go a little too far?_

 **Griffin:** _hey seriously we're okay right?_

 **Griffin:** _I WILL just keep pestering until you answer me_

And sure enough, there was a little “...” indicator beneath that.

 **Nick:** _chill out_

 **Nick:** _I was editing, like I said_

 **Griffin:** _holy shit dude you split so fast! did I piss you off? I thought we were having fun_

 **Nick:** _we were_

 **Nick:** _it's all good, honestly._

He tried to go back to editing, but his phone kept on humming till he thought it was going to go off the edge of his desk.

 **Griffin:** _so what was that about_

 **Griffin:** _Nick_

 **Griffin:** _I don't stand for weirdness Nick_

 **Griffin:** _TALK TO ME HOMIE_

 **Griffin:** _I don't want things to be weird_

Nick dragged a hand across his jaw, his stubble scraping his palm. Christ.

 **Nick:** _I think I was just embarrassed. It's no big deal_

 **Griffin:** _???_

 **Nick:** _because I let you take the reins so much_

Why the fuck had he put it like that?

Griffin began typing, stopped, and then began again. Nick tried to beat him to it and failed, hitting send in the same instant that Griffin’s text appeared.

 **Griffin:** _I don’t see why that’s embarrassing_

 **Nick:** _lol wait forget that_ _  
_

**Nick:** _I don’t THINK about it idk_

 **Griffin:** _Is there something to think about?_

That was a horribly cruel response, because all it did was beg him to overthink this. Which he felt he’d done enough of, really, and if he had deliberately chosen not to examine the bizarre hot flashes this conversation seemed to keep giving him, then maybe there was a _reason_ for that. Some things had to be treated like horror movie monsters: you didn’t let them know you were aware of them, and they wouldn’t notice you. It was flawless logic.

 **Griffin:** _I wish you’d come back on skype_

Nick’s eyes went to the bottom of the screen, where the tiny icon showed him he hadn’t signed out of Skype. Griffin could see he was online, but he wasn’t calling.

 **Nick:** _I wish you’d stop fucking with me_

 **Griffin:** _I’m not fucking with you_

 **Griffin:** _I didn’t mean anything by it when I brought it up, but there’s something going on and I think it could be fun for everyone if you let us work through it_

Nick thumped his forehead down onto the desk. He had not bargained for this, Griffin stampeding into the china shop of his psyche at three o’clock on a Thursday afternoon.

And then there was the telltale sound of a Skype call coming in, and Nick groaned down at his feet. He let it sing at him for a few moments, and then he turned so his cheek lay flat on the desk and he could see his screen just enough to hit Answer.

The video window popped up, with Griffin’s face in the centre and then, much smaller and off in the corner, the preview screen showing Nick’s bedroom. Griffin’s face turned to consternation. “Nick?”

Nick made an indistinct noise.

“C’mon, Nick, sit up.” And it was just this side of a request instead of a command, with a plaintive edge to Griffin’s voice, so Nick did. He didn’t know why he felt sort of bad, when Griffin was the one who would let go of this… whatever it was. He swept a hand through his hair self-consciously.

“Uh-huh,” said Nick, for lack of anything else to say. Griffin was just watching him. “Dude, what?”

“I wanted to talk,” Griffin said, like it was obvious. “We usually get to catch up a little after we record.”

“I guess.” Nick felt on edge anyway. “What, um -”

“ _Any_ thing, man, what’d you have for breakfast?” The tone was way too enthusiastic. Nick narrowed his eyes.

“Coffee,” he admitted, and Griffin clicked his tongue.

“Most important meal of the day,” he recited. “Are you still drinking those cinnamon caramel concoctions from Starbucks?”

“There’s calcium in the whipped cream, probably,” Nick said. “And -”

“They don’t even do half the cinnamon and half the caramel, they just make it like they’re making two lattes and then they only put in the milk and coffee for one!”

“I can’t believe you of all people are coming after me about healthy beverage -”

“No, no, you misunderstand, I’m not getting after you about their nutritional content, it’s just, they’re fuckin’ _gross_.”

“This from the guy who’ll eat raw broccoli on its own -?”

“It’s a _strategy_ , Nicolas, I’m going to live ten years longer than you because _I_ follow up my fast food shame days with clean, nutritious meals like an entire pound of broccoli. And one of your detox teas, obviously, and all that processed evil just evaporates out my pores, it’s very scientific.”

Nick was laughing before Griffin was even done speaking, and Griffin was lighting up at the reaction, milking it for all he could.

“And _frankly_ ,” he went on, “I’m sad to know you’re shilling these ‘teatoxes’ in public but still sucking down your sixty-three grams of liquid sugar in private, deceiving all your loyal fans just trying to get their bikini bodies on!”

Nick was still giggling. “But I already look good in a bikini, so -”

“I’m sure that’s the case, but your dishonesty _shocks_ me.”

“Well,” Nick said, and under the desk his hands were starting to fidget on their own, fingers flexing and palms inexplicably warm. “I’m sorry?” It wasn’t banter, it wasn’t funny at all, but Griffin was just staring at him and he’d lost the thread somehow. There was a little pause, and it was deeply unsettling.

Griffin’s head tilted to the side just a fraction. “Honesty can be scary,” he remarked, and then clicked his tongue again and made an exaggerated _that’s life_ sort of face. It was almost enough to give it the cadence of a joke. “Like, admitting to your ten thousand followers that you don’t always treat your body like the holy temple it is, or admitting to me that you’re totally getting railroaded _again_ , and you seem just fine with it.”

Nick had always found the concept of deer freezing in the headlights of an oncoming car to be baffling - something dumb animals did because they weren’t equipped to handle what was barreling towards them. But he got it, suddenly, sitting there watching Griffin’s slightly grainy image, feeling his heart crawl up into his throat. He sat very still and thought, wildly, that maybe if he didn’t move, Griffin might think his computer had frozen.

“If I’m crossing a line here, you can just hang up on me again,” said Griffin. “Or you can stay on the call and… talk.”

“Talk,” Nick croaked, and Griffin shrugged.

“Or not talk,” he said, and Nick swallowed.

“What - what’re you -”

“I’m not exactly sure,” Griffin admitted. “But you could help me figure it out.”

Nick stared. Griffin looked so fucking chill, leaning on one arm of his desk chair, watching his screen like he was waiting for something to load.

“I don’t know,” Nick muttered, and he scrubbed a hand across his face - just half, so he could still see Griffin with one eye.

“That’s okay. Hey, stop it, that’s okay.”

Nick put his hand down.

“I don't wanna make you feel shitty, you hear me?”

“Uh. Sure.” Nick cleared his throat, scrunched his eyes shut for just a second. Surreal. All of this was so surreal.

“I care about you. I just wanna talk to you, and listen to you. In that order.”

“This is…”

“How’s it make you feel?” Griffin leaned in a little. “When you keep letting me cut you off, what do you feel?”

“I - nothing, usually! I mean, until you started fuckin’ -”

“Yeah, okay, but what do you feel _now_ , Nick?” There was a faint edge to Griffin’s voice, just then, something new.

Nick shrugged, opened his mouth, shook his head. Dropped his face into both his hands now, felt the heat on his cheeks and the sweat on his palms. “Wired,” he said, muffled.

“I can’t hear you, buddy, you gotta look at me.”

“Wired!” Nick raised his head and stared at the wall behind his laptop, anywhere but at Griffin. “Like I’m vibrating, okay, and I get - I get fuckin’ chatty when I’m this on edge, and it’s - that’s not me, so if you could just _say_ something, just -”

“Shut you up?” Griffin’s voice was quiet but Nick stopped short, his tongue heavy in his mouth. He gave a helpless, inarticulate shrug, and he went to drag a hand up his face and into his hair, just to do something, but Griffin stopped him with a simple “Nick.”

Nick dropped his hand.

“That’s not really what I asked,” said Griffin. “You feel on edge _until_ I shut you up. How do you feel when I cut you off? Talk over you?” A small, thoughtful pause. “Take the reins?”

Nick sucked his lips into his mouth and bit down, because there was a sound building in his throat and he absolutely fucking refused to let it out. He realized the heat wasn’t just in his face and hands but deep down, too. He risked the tiniest shift in his chair. Why had he worn goddamn jeans?

“You don’t have to answer that,” Griffin told him, a small benediction. “Just, uh - hm. Just give me a nod to tell me you’ll hang up if I’m freaking you out.”

He managed that, a small, jerky nod.

“Okay,” said Griffin, folding his arms on the desk. “That’s good, because honestly, this is kind of fun. I mean, it wasn’t always. I was just making a throwaway comment, and I felt kinda bad at first, but - how could I _not_ start thinking about it when you reacted like that. And then you came back, and you let me do it again, and again, just like -”

Nick was still biting down, but it came out anyway this time, a thin wavering sound, and Griffin paused.

“Like you were asking me to push you around,” he said, and Nick stopped trying to fight any of it anymore. He let out another noise, lower, half desire and half discomfort as his dick pressed up against unforgiving denim and metal, and he gripped the arms of his chair and let the humiliation roll over him in waves. Griffin, sweetly asking him back onto Skype just to find out what happened if he pushed enough buttons.

“God,” Nick muttered, and the corner of Griffin’s mouth quirked.

“So you _do_ wanna talk. Tell me what you’re feeling, Nicolas.” It landed just this side of mocking, with his full name at the end.

He didn’t want to talk, and Griffin knew it. “I don’t - I can’t -”

“You can’t quite put a sentence together.” Griffin cocked his head. “Is that right?”

Nick moved one hand from the armrest down to his lap, needing some small relief. He slid the zipper on his jeans down, so slow, as if Griffin could possibly hear the tiny metallic rasp. He palmed himself through his boxers - not what he _wanted_ , but something at least. It took everything in him to swallow a moan.

“I can talk,” he managed, and tried to do a defiant sort of chin tilt. “What do you want me to t _a_ lk about?” His voice wavered a little near the end, there, but it was mostly - well, it was more than he’d said in a while.

Griffin let out a huff of laughter. “Are you touching yourself?”

Nick gritted his teeth and stilled his hand, pressed it to his thigh. “No.”

“You liar. Is it ‘cause you think there’s something shameful about this? It’s not a big deal, Nick, so you like it when I take control sometimes. You like to be… overwhelmed?”

Nick’s head dropped, which was a dumb move because then he had to stare down at his own hard-on, his barely opened jeans, the wet spot forming on his boxers, and think about what all of it was for. “It’s humiliating,” he said, and his own admission sent a little shiver through his body.

“Nick, look at me.”

Somehow, Nick always forgot how fucking low Griffin’s voice could go. He didn’t pull it out very often, but Griffin could make his voice the sort of earthquake rumble that’d first made a teenaged Nick aware that he liked men at all.

He looked up.

“Put your hand back on your dick,” Griffin said. “Are you listening to me?”

“Always,” Nick whispered, and hell if that wasn’t the truth.

“You’re allowed to like that,” Griffin said.

“But -”

“You look fuckin’ good, Nick Robinson, if I could I’d pin you to a bed right now and keep talking till you begged me to touch you. But I can’t touch you, and I’m not interested in watching you deprive yourself. Do you have lube?”

“I -”

“Go get it.”

Nick scrambled for the bedside table, where a little bottle lay in the top drawer. When he leaned back into his seat again, Griffin was grinning faintly.

“You don't have to rush,” he said. “I'm not going anywhere. What are you thinking about?”

Nick kicked off the jeans but kept the boxers, pulling his dick out. He couldn't just sit bare-assed on his desk chair. Griffin was waiting for him to speak; the click of the bottle cap seemed deafening in the expectant silence.

“You,” he said, and Griffin just waited, because he knew that wasn’t enough _._ “I mean, you - you could do - what you said before, that -”

“Pin you down?” Griffin crossed his arms. “Make you beg?”

Nick groaned at the first touch of his slick hand on his cock. His eyes wanted to shut, but they fluttered open again - Griffin was watching, watching _him,_ and he looked - entranced.

“I can't do one,” Griffin said with a disappointed grimace. “But the other… Nick, I’m gonna need you to tell me what you want.”

Nick let out a bizarre sound that was both laughter and pleasure; he was going slow, for now, trying to read the room, but it still felt _good_ , good enough that he knew his voice would shake if he spoke. His chest went tight at the thought. “Griffin,” he pleaded, and he didn’t know how Griffin could tell that it was real, that it was too much, but he saw the shift in posture and tone.

“Not today?” Griffin put a hand to his mouth, bit a little at the pad of his thumb. “Should I tell you what I want instead?”

“God, yeah.” Nick sighed, palming the head of his cock. “Yeah, that…”

“I want to watch you suck my dick,” Griffin said, still with a hand by his mouth, a new, faint nervous line between his eyebrows. “I could pretend I’m just thinking about making you feel good but honestly I’m thinking about you kneeling here sucking me off, looking up at me with your hair in your eyes, and me reaching down to hold it back for you.”

Nick groaned, his pace quickening to match the rambling energy in Griffin’s voice. “What a gentleman,” he panted, grinning up into the camera, and Griffin laughed, rubbing at his jaw.

“That’s me,” he said. “Just - your mouth, Nick, that’s all I’m ever thinking about. I wanna kiss you for hours until our fuckin’ faces are numb, find out how you use your tongue, find out how much of me you can take and how hard you wanna push yourself when you hit that limit.”

Nick could picture it, suddenly, vividly - Griffin’s jeans pooled around his ankles, Nick kneeling in front of him, hands on his thighs, Griffin’s own hand gentle on Nick’s forehead, smoothing away the longest pieces of his hair. The heavy heat of a dick on his tongue and the yawning effort to take as much as he could - it had been a while, but he clenched his jaw at the memory. He was starting to slump over a little, one elbow on the desk keeping him upright, his hair slipping into his eyes just as Griffin had said. He looked up through the curtain of hair, right into the camera lens, and then he threw caution to the wind and sucked his bottom lip into his mouth, as pornographic as he could make it, dragging his teeth across it as he let it go.

“Fuck off,” Griffin said, and he was laughing a little, but he sounded winded.

“Yeah?” Nick’s gaze turned to the screen, to the way Griffin was leaning in close and scrubbing a hand through the side of his hair, restless. His dick twitched as he thought about what Griffin might look like when he was _really_ worked up - would he keep his hands to himself, would he touch the back of Nick’s head to encourage - to push? - would he grip Nick’s shoulders, bruisingly tight, or maybe the armrests of his chair until the leather creaked?

“Yeah, it’s _cruel_ , drawing attention to your mouth like that, when all I wanna do - sometime I should make you talk until you’re begging to suck my dick just so it’ll shut you up.”

Nick had to force himself to keep his head up, keep his face to the camera when all his muscles wanted to give out. His free hand scrabbled for purchase on the desk. Everything felt hot; he thought for a wild moment how glad he was Griffin still had his good mic hooked up, that he could hear everything like Griffin was talking into his ear. The aspiration of Griffin’s _fuck_ sent a shudder through him.

“Your mouth,” Griffin said, and he was sounding increasingly tense, “is so red, Nick, you’re killing me - I just wanna fuck it, I wanna fuck your mouth and feel you work to take it -”

Nick could feel it suddenly, the pressure mounting inside of him, the impossibility of drawing enough air for his frantic lungs. He felt Griffin’s name leave his lips on a choked whine, and then he was coming into his own hand, and Griffin was muttering curses in his ear, watching the whole thing.

The euphoria was momentary; the haze that had filled his head since this all started was clearing, and fast.

“Shit,” Nick said, as the reality of the situation started to sink in. “Wow, shit, okay, I gotta -”

“Don’t hang up!” Griffin said, all in a rush, desperation in his voice. It was just enough to make Nick pause. That, and the thought that both his hands were gross and he didn’t know which was worse to touch his laptop with. “Please don’t hang up, man, you look like you’re freaking out but it’s all good, really, it's - it's better than good. You look fuckin’ _good._ ”

Nick let out a high-pitched laugh, although nothing about this felt funny. “Thanks,” he said anyway, disinclined to argue and get the full force of Griffin’s earnestness. “I - I do gotta go, though, Griff, I need a shower so bad.”

Griffin stared at him for a moment, pink-cheeked, wide-eyes. He swallowed, and the mic picked it up. “Okay,” he said. “Nick?”

“Yeah?”

“Tell me we’re good? I didn't mean to go overboard, okay, you can punch me next time we see each other if that’s -”

Nick laughed, and it sounded a little more like himself. He wanted to drag a hand through his hair and remembered the state of his hands halfway to his head. “That's insane, that’s not - punching is not top of my list for the next time I see you, okay?”

“Okay,” said Griffin, and he was smiling a little. “But we’re -”

“We’re good.” Nick wondered if this was for his own peace of mind as much as Griffin’s, because he could feel the awful knot in his chest starting to loosen. “I’m hanging up, now, okay?”

He had to shut the laptop with an elbow; Griffin was still laughing when the sound cut off.

Griffin texted him, later - in the shower he could hear his phone vibrating on the counter, and when he got out, scrubbing a towel over his head, it was to nine texts.

 **Griffin:** _you sounded so incredible when you came_

 **Griffin:** _that's totally insufficient but I don't have the words right now_

 **Griffin:** _I miss you dude I know this is crazy but I don't care_

 **Griffin:** _I can't believe there's somebody out there who likes it when I’m a pushy jackass and I can't even touch him_

 **Griffin:** _and the way you get when you're all embarrassed nick it's so hot it's torture when u bitexur lip an try to hide ur face_

 **Griffin:** _shit typos_ _im typing one handed now_

 **Griffin:** _i hope it's ok to tell u that but_

 **Griffin:** _i wish my hand was ur mouth_

 **Griffin:** _would u look up at me_

Nick stood there, one hand holding the towel where it was draped over his head, contemplating that last one. Two minutes ago.

 **Nick:** _of course I would. I like to see you react to stuff too_

 **Griffin:** _fuck_

Nick pulled the towel down over his face. The next E3 felt way, way too far away. He wondered what plane tickets cost this time of year.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm running a sideblog for polygon rpf with my gf over [here](http://kevinspaceyvoice.tumblr.com)... come talk to us


End file.
